Emergency Preparedness for the Common Man

Emergency preparedness and being prepared means a lot of different things for different people. You may be familiar with the term “prepper” as applied to that off-grid survivalist living in the wilderness or the militia group preparing for government collapse. This site is not geared toward those folks. Nor is it geared toward those preparing for the end of the world apocalypse. There is no preparedness efforts to save you from that calamity other than being right with God.

Emergency preparedness for the common man (or woman) is simply about making yourself, your family, and your community safer and more resilient when more likely disastrous incidents do occur.

While recent events such as coronavirus, 9/11, floods, hurricanes, and western wild fires might raise your awareness about potential disasters, sadly most people seem to have the attitude that it won’t happen to them. When the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic spread across the globe, many of those naysayers were shocked when their local economy was closed down by government officials and they were ordered to stay at home to prevent the spread of the disease. They discovered it can happen to them – either directly or indirectly.

While disasters on the scale of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are not common and most people won’t generally experience other major disasters, it’s pretty much guaranteed you will likely experience at least some other minor emergencies. It only makes sense for you to be prepared for those. In fact, the more prepared you are for those minor emergencies, the better prepared you will be when the big one strikes.

Even though the current SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic show signs of slowing, many experts warn of a second wave. History has shown in previous pandemics that illness can occur in waves of up to three waves over a 9-12 month period. Often the first wave was not the most severe. During the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, for example, over 90% of the deaths occurred during the second wave. Could this present Covid-19 disease be your wake up call to be more prepared for a subsequent wave later in the year or next?

Instead of being that person crying out for rescue by the government, it’s my hope you and I will be those self-sufficient persons reaching out to help those victims.

You can improve your level of preparedness through…

Planning allows you to prepare for and respond to anticipated disruptions and potential hazards following a disaster.

Education and intelligence would include learning about the potential emergencies you might encounter and their potential impact, the steps you might take to mitigate the crisis, and some basic skills in coping with the event. Having a degree of situational awareness in your particular scenario can mean the difference between life and death.

Training is important because even though you may have emergency supplies, they will do you no good if they don’t work or you don’t know how to use them.

As individuals, we can all (and should) prepare our homes and families to cope during that critical period. What you do today in these matters can have a critical impact on life and death and the quality of your survival.

It’s my goal with this website to help keep you informed about the “common sense” steps in emergency preparedness and resources to keep you and your family safe should a disaster or other type of emergency occur. I will also write about my personal journey towards emergency preparedness and some things I’ve learned along the way.

Prioritize Your Emergency Preparedness

It’s important to understand that not all emergencies are equal and the likelihood of emergencies and the degree of your preparations vary with your personal situation.

It’s not reasonable to expect you will ever be able to be prepared for EVERY disaster.

Prioritizing your emergency preparedness essentially means you should consider the different emergencies you might find yourself in and organize your preparations based on the likelihood of that occurring.

Another aspect of emergencies is the scope: personal, local, regional, national, or global. Since it is those personal emergencies you are most likely to encounter most often, you may want to begin your preparations to deal first with personal emergencies, expanding to local and beyond later.

There are also emergencies that might occur in your home, at your place of employment, or on the road. Again, begin closest to you… your home and perhaps on the road since you’re likely to be spending quite a bit of time in your car.

Organize Your Emergency Preparedness

Another preparedness step you need to take is to prioritize needs. You may need one or more of these in varying degrees for each of the above emergencies. Start with the basics in each category and expand your resources over time as you can. Begin your preparation with the focus on your basic needs, and what you must have in order to survive, regardless of the nature and scope of the disaster.

Each of the different emergency situations will require different disaster resources, so after you’ve prioritized what likely emergencies you might experience you’ll want to organize your emergency preparedness resources based on that list.

Food

Water

First Aid

Shelter

Self-defense

Communications

Plan Your Emergency Preparedness

The last prioritization factor you need to consider is the time frame.

You’ll need to assess each of your prioritized categories of disaster and needed resources for different time periods. Your emergency may only be a short-term power outage, for example, or the disaster may extend for a longer period of time.

I believe every person should have at least resources enough to last 72 hours because following a disaster the road and communications infrastructure may be severely impacted delaying response by police, fire, and emergency medical services.

The fact is… disasters happen and are generally unexpected with little or no time for you to prepare. Keep in mind that traditional emergency services and personnel can be overwhelmed initially and your life or health can be endangered.

It only makes sense you should do what you can to minimize the impact of these emergencies. And, since you never know what might happen next, if you haven’t begun emergency preparedness already…you should start NOW.

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The goal of The Prepper’s Blueprint is to help you find freedom through self-reliance, and ultimately, to get you and your family to a point where you can not only survive, but thrive, in a world that may be permanently altered.

Economic expert Michael Snyder and Barbara Fix address the whys and the hows of getting prepared for the coming crisis in their new book Get Prepared Now!